Hazel Alcock This is Me

Education

 Web References

1. 1. The New Bern Sun Journal

   www.newbernsj.com/SiteProcesso - [Cached]

   Published on: 12/21/2004   Last Visited: 12/21/2004

   Hazel Alcock is pictured at the Pamlico Visitors Center with toy donations for needy children.
   ...
   Call Hazel.
   
   Over the years in Pamlico County, that's been a familiar refrain for local folks with questions about community events or projects, finding a historical tidbit or locating an interesting character.
   
   As community relations director for the county schools, Hazel Alcock is considered an authoritative and reliable source on the county's past, present and future.
   
   But, she doesn't hang up her work hat at 5 p.m.
   
   An example is her grant-writing skill -getting money for the schools and for local non-profits.
   
   "People ask me, 'when in the world do you have time to write grants?'" she laughs.
   
   Try 3 a.m. Hobucken time.
   
   "I have to write when I am not interrupted and that is usually at 3 a.m. in the morning," she says. "When I have a grant, I often get up at 3 o'clock - not because my clock goes off, but because my internal clock goes off with things on my mind. I have to get up and work on it then. Once I get to the office, and the phone is ringing and people are coming in, I can't focus on that until I have quiet time again. And in my position, there is hardly any quiet time."
   
   Alcock, an Alliance native who except for college years at Chowan and East Carolina University has spent her life in the county, has little quiet time with involvement in local groups ranging from Partnerships for Children and the Juvenile Crime Prevention Council to the Rural Development Panel and the Chamber of Commerce.
   
   For her labors and contributions, she was named the Chamber's 2004 Citizen of the Year last week - an honor that came as a surprise to a woman who is usually on the distribution end of recognition.
   
   Her thoughts on her community involvement are simple.
   
   "I just love my county, and I want to be a role model for young people so that we will be building good citizens and those people will be there to take over when we're not able to do it anymore," she says.
   
   She grew up one of nine children of farmer Carlos Hunnings and his wife, Lura, in the Alliance area.
   
   She planned a secretarial career and went to two-year Chowan College. She transferred to ECU for business studies, and only came upon the idea of pursuing a career as an educator after an instructor had her fill in teaching a shorthand class.
   
   She was encouraged by the teacher and students alike and refocused for a bachelor of science degree in business education.
   
   During her time before graduation in 1967, she had shared rides from Greenville to Pamlico County with Frank Alcock - a former high school classmate - but hardly her high school sweetheart.
   
   As she recalls, they were both superlatives at Pamlico County High School - she was voted Most Dependable and he was Most Popular.
   
   "We would have been voted Least Likely to Wed," she laughs, after nearly 40 years of marriage and two children, and three grandchildren.
   
   She taught at Pamlico High School and at then Pamlico Technical Institute, later the community college.
   
   In 1974, she began a 10-year sabbatical from public work to be a stay-at-home-mom with her children Frankie and Kim.
   
   She began to get really active in the community in the late 1970s - Cooperative Extension Homemakers and the PTA to name a few.
   
   One of her first projects was setting up a volunteer program at Anderson Elementary School - a schedule that even included substitute volunteers to ensure someone always showed up.
   
   She was active in volunteer work and ran for the school board, serving from 1984 to 1990, while returning to the work force as an instructor and continuing education co-coordinator at what had become Pamlico Community College.
   
   "It would really irritate me when I was a school board member and people would refer to me as a politician," she recalls.
   ...
   For Hazel, it is all in a day, or night's work.
   
   But, with grandchildren ages 9, 7, 1 and more expected, she does look toward retirement, although she doesn't plan to abandon her community commitments.
   
   "I just want to spend more time with my husband and my grandchildren," she says.